Non-governmental organizations and social innovation in international voluntary service: A qualitative study

In recent years, it has been observed that the role of non-governmental organizations in ensuring the welfare of disadvantaged communities around the world has become increasingly important. Hence, they have a complementary role to states as well as national and international organizations. Increasing expectations from non-governmental organizations brought along a great responsibility, and innovation in solving social problems made a rapid entry into the agenda of these organizations. Therefore, comprehensive data-based research in the field of social innovation in international humanitarian aid and development has become extremely important. In relation to this need, this thesis has aimed to examine civil society organisations based in Turkey offering international humanitarian aid. The thesis examines their organizational structure and their goals from the perspective of sustainability and social innovation. The study was designed according to the qualitative research method in order to develop an in-depth understanding of the research field and to better understand the perceptions, attitudes and process of non-governmental organizations regarding social innovation. In addition, this study was conducted to understand the role of the actors in the social innovation ecosystem at the point of developing innovative solutions for social problems across borders and to determine the factors affecting the social innovation ecosystem. In accordance with this method, semi-structured interviews were held with 15 participants from 10 non-governmental organizations, the websites and social media accounts of these non-governmental organizations were examined and the relevant documents were analyzed. The content of all collected data has been analyzed. This research showed that civil society organizations based in Turkey were open to innovation and they produce the most innovative projects but they were in the beginning of the innovation journey. The analyzed examples and innovative sample projects of non-governmental organizations prove that a better system is possible. It has been determined that leaders who value creativity, take risks, an innovative corporate culture and finance are the most important internal factors in supporting social innovation in non-governmental organizations. In addition, bureaucratic structure of the states, donors do not want to go beyond the traditional aid culture, financing have been identified as important external factors preventing social innovation. The importance of cooperation between civil society, academia, public and private sectors, which can be defined as stakeholders in the social innovation ecosystem that focuses on social problems, has emerged. The research has shown that the field of social innovation and the activities of non-governmental organizations are complementary in terms of solving social problems. This thesis evaluates social innovation and sustainability from the perspective of social work while at the same time developing an interdisciplinary approach. In this way, the thesis contributes to the emergence of social innovation as an important field of research in Turkey.